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Some suggestions for computer equipment:

• If the computer is running too slowly, remove non-essential software that you don’t use.
• Late-model equipment that you want to part with can be sold or donated.
• If you have Dell equipment, the company offers free recycling.
• Find out whether your local council collects e-waste.
• In population centres where Byteback is yet to launch, e-waste can be dropped off on a pay-to-recycl

Article Tags:  electronics,  waste,  computers,  mobiles,  broken,  technology,  disposal,  

E-waste disposal

Martin Oliver

08 March 2010

Australia is a technological society in love with gadgets. We buy at least 2.5 million new computers every year and more than 1 million TV sets. While these provide many benefits, such a high level of consumption eventually leads to a large quantity of electronic waste, known as e-waste. The United Nations has estimated that between 20 and 50 million tonnes of e-waste is generated worldwide every year. Unwanted computers, monitors, televisions, keyboards, printers and games consoles are all proliferating.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, e-waste is growing about three times faster than the rest of our waste stream. As the quantity increases, the problem becomes harder to ignore. Technological change, planned obsolescence, falling prices and changing fashions are all contributing to an accelerating replacement rate.

Whereas 10 years ago, a typical computer would be replaced every four to five years, this lifespan has now dropped considerably to about two years. Exponential growth in computing power among state-of-the-art machines leads to the development of memory-hungry features that will slow an older unit, often leading to its replacement.

The toxic trade

In addition to its sheer volume, the second major issue associated with e-waste is its toxicity. The range of chemicals used includes lead (the solders in circuit boards), cadmium (in batteries), mercury (in switches) and brominated flame retardants (in plastics.) The glass used in TVs and older-style cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors and TVs contains up to 20 per cent lead. Other harmful trace elements include arsenic, antimony, beryllium, cobalt and chromium.

Traditionally, the normal disposal avenue for e-waste was landfill, but there has been steadily rising concern about the risk of toxic chemicals leaching out and contaminating groundwater. Incineration, practised in some countries, including the US, is even worse, producing toxic ash, dioxins and heavy metal emissions. Recycling would appear to be the solution, but even there some practices are causing major environmental headaches.

Strict regulation of e-waste recycling practices in developed countries has considerably pushed up recycling costs, creating an economic incentive to send the waste overseas to developing countries where there are often no controls on burning, disassembly and disposal. Such destinations include India, Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria.

Most treatment of electronic waste in developing countries is a real-life horror story perpetuated by poverty and government inaction. Computer wire is burnt to access valuable copper, and circuit boards are melted in pots to extract the lead: dioxins and other carcinogens are released in the process. Riverbank acid baths are used to treat the boards for removing gold, while CRT monitors have no recycling value and are simply dumped.

In Ghana, a country with no e-waste laws, eyewitnesses have observed computer parts being burnt in a waste dump next to the Agbogbloshie Market near Accra, sending a toxic plume into a neighbouring playing field administered by the Ministry of Sport. Nearby, acres of computers are stacked up in piles. The ground is poisoned, but goats feed on the waste and children play, oblivious of the danger.

These problems reached a wider audience in 2002, with the release of the film Exporting Harm, produced by the Basel Action Network and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. This focused on the Chinese town of Guiyu, where primitive e-waste recycling has left high levels of dioxins, flame retardants and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the surrounding environment. Drinking water is now transported from 30km away.